From Food to Event– CatMan Approach for the Meta Category Grilling

01.

Background

  • Grilling is pure emotion and one of the most popular leisure activities in Germany

     

  • However, the category "grilling" is often represented without a concept in food retailing and its potential is therefore not fully exploited

     

  • Weber's goal is to support the food retail market by introducing different concepts to use the seasonal category of grilling for profiling, to raise the potential of the meta category and to skim off the willingness to pay of barbecue shoppers. In this case it was important to evaluate the potential of food items as well as non-food items

02.

Research questions

  • Who is the shopper and how does he shop for the barbecue?
  • Which products are relevant in the category grilling?
  • Which brand is most strongly associated with grilling and bundles the positive emotions?
  • How great is the potential of the Weber brand in food retail?
  • Where should the season category be placed and to what extent?
  • How can the category be displayed?
03.

Approach

Combined approach of quantitative and qualitative research

  • 6 focus groups among others to determine the functional and emotional benefits of the category and to identify the shopper-decicion-tree
  • Online study with 1,500 respondents to quantify the focus group results and to determine the optimal prices for various Weber products in food retailing (research methods among others: Implicit Association Test & Choice-Based-Conjoint-Analysis)
04.

Result

 

  • The main barbecue season is from May to September, when the barbecue is usually every two weeks
  • Every fourth respondent has more than one grill, with the charcoal grill being the clear favorite of the Germans (70%), followed by the electric (30%) and gas grill (25%)
  • Meat is still the most important ingredient in grilling, but 57% of grillers already buy vegetarian alternatives. These often serve to increase the variety of tastes in the barbecue menu
  • One in three respondents said they owned a Weber brand grill and Weber is number 1 in unsupported brand awareness
  • The Weber griller grills more frequently than other respondents, has a longer grilling season and a higher willingness to pay on food for grilling. They therefore represent a valuable target group for the food retail market
  • In the context of the study 6 different grill types as well as their main shopping facilities were identified and individual approaches for the activation per grill shopper type were derived

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